Meetup Presentation

Recently, Dayna was our special guest at the San Mateo B2B Bloggers Meetup. If you’re a Bay Area B2B blogger, come join us! Dayna did a presentation on “Blogging for Lead Generation.” Here are five tips from Dayna’s presentation. Apply them to take your B2B blog to the next level. [Read more…]

According to Gartner, CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs by 2017. Yes, I know many of you have heard this prediction over and over again but keep listening, because this prediction is so bold that it is hard to fathom. At least in B2B, marketers were the weak link on the executive team. They sat at the kid’s table at the party while the “adults” ate steak and patted each other on the back. Begging for money internally was about pitching a bunch of people on the executive team who had no idea what they were trying to do and hearing “no”. One of my favorites from years back was when my buddy who is a demand generation rockstar VP of Marketing was telling me that his CEO wouldn’t give him budget for anything but did feel like he should be spending his time trying to get him on Oprah. (Seriously). Boy, that has changed. The marketer has been given a checkbook.

The question: What posts work better than others?
I definitely learned a lot about what content works better than others. Here are the rankings:
1. Rich, long, detailed posts — We used to save this type of content for whitepapers, but more people are pushing their best content to the blog. This type of content works. For example, check out Kissmetrics Blog, which produces rich blog content DAILY. They produce guides which are written like whitepapers but are on the blog not “behind the gate” in long-form content. I tested this concept in my post: Cold Call, revisted: Best practices for getting in the door. Without a doubt, this post brought the most views, uniques, shares, followers, compliments, and links than any post in my history. [Read more…]

I have spent the last couple months testing and practicing blogging and content marketing strategies with the Funnelholic. My brother Paul wanted to learn online marketing so he signed up to help. People have been noticing the changes and asking me about some of things I have been doing so I decided to write them down.

Dear Craig: “Eat your own dog food” — I help clients with their content marketing and social marketing strategy. I needed to be a better role model with the Funnelholic. It’s been fun trying new things and passing them along to others.

Also a quick note: There are way more things I could be doing so please don’t consider this exhaustive..since people have asked — I thought I would provide the data of what I have done so far today.

Net-net: Traffic is up 500-600%. I have gotten a fair number of inbound leads which is interesting since I don’t have that many calls-to-action on the site (yet). Just blog. Blog til the cows come home. It works and helps you synthesize your thoughts on particular topics. [Read more…]

Demand generation is about to hit another plane right now. It’s time to have fun being a marketer again. Before I continue, please allow me to provide you with my brief but incomplete history with demand generation.

Today’s MadLibs features marketing thought leader Michael Brenner. Michael is truly one of the best minds in b2b marketing. (Considering how many followers he has on Twitter and how many top-XX lists he is on, I think everyone else knows that as well). When I get the chance to talk to him, I was learn something new. As someone from SAP once told me: “When I have a question, I just call Michael Brenner.” Enjoy!

1. The b2b buyer is not gonna take it any more. They are sick and tired of the overly-promotional horse doo-doo you’re trying to pass as off as content.
2. The biggest innovation in marketing is the social, mobile and digital tools that are empowering our buyers to take control of the process.
3. The coolest thing happening in b2b marketing is the pace of change. Bad marketing was never in style but now, there is no much less room for error.
4. My favorite marketing book is umm, The “Funnelholic.” Craig wrote a book right?
5. My favorite social media channel is Twitter. I like that it is short and sweet and instant. Good content gets shared. Bad content is awesomely ignored.